Comparing the Effect of Behavioral and Solution-Focused Couple Therapy on Marital Conflicts, Sexual Intimacy, Marital Harmony, and Disharmony

Family as a group is a social unit that is formed based on marriage and marital life. One of the factors affecting the survival, durability, and growth of the family is healthy relationships based on compatibility and understanding between members, especially husband, and wife. The present research was carried out to compare the effectiveness of behavioral and solution-focused couple therapy on marital conflicts, sexual intimacy, marital harmony, and disharmony. The sample population of this research includes all teachers with marital conflicts who referred to two centers of Omid and Peyvand in the 3rd district of Kermanshah city in the first quarter of 2018, who were 128 persons. 60 of these people, as a statistical sample; were selected by convenience sampling method and randomly assigned to two test groups and one control group including 20 people. Data was collected using the Enrich marital satisfaction scale and the scale of marital harmony and disharmony by (Xu & Lai, 2004). Then the couples of the 2 experimental groups participated in 8 sessions with 1.5 hours of couple’s therapy and solution-focused sessions in groups. The results were analyzed using multivariate analysis of covariance and Bonferroni post hoc test in SPSS software version 24. The results showed that behavioral couple therapy, compared to solution-focused couple therapy (P≥0.001), is effective to reduce marital conflicts, and increase sexual intimacy, and marital harmony and disharmony. Behavioral couple therapy training programs, whether after the training or during the three-month follow-up period after the training, are effective in resolving conflicts, sexual intimacy, marital harmony, and disharmony of couples; Therefore, it is suggested to marriage counselors simultaneously use behavioral and solution-focused couple therapy in interventions for couples who have chronic marital conflicts and marital intimacy problems.